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An assumption that I can make about lady’s basketball is that RSA is getting murdered under the boards. RSA ladies seem to struggle with getting internationally capable forwards and centres. There are very few RSA ladies who are taller than 1.83m (6ft) or even 1.78m (5ft10inches). The tallest in the SA team is maybe about 1.80m (5ft11inches). I’ve seen very little ladies basketball, but the only lady who seems to have a complete set of power forward/centre offensive skills under the boards is Emma Ledwaba. Emma however is essentially meant to be a small forward/shooting guard in terms of her thinking and skills So you can imagine what happens when RSA power forwards/centres at 5ft11inches who don’t have complete defensive and offensive skill sets come against power forwards/centres who have those skill sets and are over 6ft tall. RSA gets physically and technically dominated under the boards. When RSA takes a good shot, it’s as good as giving away the ball 70% of the time. I can assume RSA desperately needs to have extremely knowledgeable “short” (6ft tall and shorter) power forwards/centres, with outstanding defensive and offensive rebounding, catching and shooting skill sets under the boards. Otherwise RSA will always battle internationally. That’s my opinion anyway….

RSA talks about improving the game, but from a mathematical point of view, as a layman, this seems not to be happening. Players heights, points scored per match, games played, age etc get recorded but judging by the stats provided on the web, these seem not to be important for RSA player selection. It seems that players get chosen more by “gut feel”. Good basketball countries probably highly value stats. For example stats on a young lady such Diana Taurasi are easily available and justify why she is so highly rated. The same probably applies for any top European or American player. If somebody says they are good, the stats will be there to support that comment. Of the current RSA ladies player, where are their stats to justify why they were so highly rated. I can guarantee that if stats were highly valued a few good surprises would happen ie some young lady from the Northern Province or Eastern Cape suddenly “appears” in the RSA team, because her stats justify her inclusion. Who’s the top scorer in any league. Who has the best average scores etc. For a layman who wants to support basketball it seems like they are hidden secret…

One of the things I think I’ve seen with many young RSA ladies is the phenomenal improvement that has been made with techniques of free-throw shooting, distance shooting ie 3-pointers etc. But the one area that in my opinion seems to have stagnated is with shooting under the boards in a man-to-man situation. Many scoring opportunities are lost simply because of a lack of knowledge and skills in a man-to-man situation under the basket. Many RSA young ladies it seems, try their lungs out, but are handicapped by a lack of skill and knowledge under the basket in a man-to-man situation. In other words RSA lady forwards/centres seem to be lacking in doing the stationary position-catch(from rebound or pass)-pivot-shoot (lay-up or jump shot) thing. These skills in my opinion, a layman, are important to learn and master if RSA ladies want to become a contender in African basketball or even international basketball. If this doesn’t happen, RSA lady basketball will continue putting to much pressure on guard type scoring. In other words the guards will have to be super-brilliant scoring machines, but even then Michael Jordan (shooting guard) had to be super strong defensively. Furthermore he needed a defensively strong small forward in Scottie Pippen and a rebound machine in someone like Dennis Rodman (power forward ) who had stats like 20 rebounds a game, 2 points a game or a tall centre like Bill Cartwright (7foot1inch, 2.16m.) and also goodish point-guards like BJ Armstrong or John Paxson. Not to mention a winning coach like Phil Jackson….